Addressing Ableism and Creating an Inclusive Society, with Catarina Rivera

Jackie - 00:00:00:

You're listening to The Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Ferguson, certified Diversity Executive, writer, human rights advocate, and co-founder of the Diversity Movement. On this podcast, I'm talking to trailblazers, game changers and glass ceiling breakers who share their inspiring stories, lessons learned, and insights on business, inclusion and personal development. Thanks for tuning in to The Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox podcast. My guest today is Catarina Rivera. Catarina is a public speaker and DEI consultant with over 14 years of experience in the public sector. Catarina works with companies to improve accessibility and inclusion, retain employees, and design better products. She is the founder of Blindish Latina, a platform smashing disability stigmas through storytelling and advocacy. Catarina is a TEDx speaker and has been featured in NASDAQ, Authority magazine, Forbes, ABC News Live, and was also named one of LinkedIn's top voices in Disability Advocacy. Catarina, welcome to the show.

Catarina - 00:01:26:

Thank you so much for having me here today.

Jackie- 00:01:29:

Of course. I'm so excited to jump into some questions. But first, Catarina, will you tell us a little about yourself, your background, your family, your identity, whatever you'd like to share.

Catarina - 00:01:40:

Sure. So I am Latina. My heritage is very important to me. I grew up in Maryland, in the United States. So if you think about Latinidad and where you hear most people are, a lot of people are in Miami or in New York, and that's not where I was. So I actually wasn't around a strong Latino community. But I feel very fortunate that my family built that. And one of the best things that my parents did was teach me Spanish as my first language. As I grew up, I was able to actually used it in my career to connect with the community and to just be able to communicate with people who were Spanish dominant. That's something that has made me feel connected to my culture, even when traveling as well. And I appreciate it as well, being able to visit the places where both of my parents were from, because my father's family is from Puerto Rico and my mom's family is from Cuba. So I got to experience what that connection is like to having a homeland outside of the United States, having a perspective that is wider than just what we learn about in our own country. So beyond that, I'm also disabled. I have a condition called Usher Syndrome, which means that I am both deaf and blind, and those are not totalities. So my deafness means that I actually do still have some hearing and I wear hearing aids. My blindness, I still have some remaining vision, but I also use a white cane for my blindness and to navigate the world. I've come a long way with my identity. I'm very confident now and proud of who I am, and that has spurred me to do the work that I do today as a public speaker, consultant, and content creator.

Jackie - 00:03:38:

Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Catarina, can we talk about the journey that your disabilities have had in your life and the progressive nature? Can you tell us a little about what that's like? Navigating the world?

Catarina - 00:03:54:

Having progressive disabilities is really interesting because you are always adapting. You're never done, you're never set. And I think that there are many other disabilities that can connect to that idea of always adapting and having a dynamic disability. So, for example, those with chronic illness might have different symptoms depending on the day, and they have different needs depending on the day. So I love to see contract where people share, oh, today I'm using a wheelchair, or today I'm using a cane, or today I'm not using a mobility aid. And all of that is valid. So for myself, I think that it was two separate journeys. I was wearing hearing aids since I was a toddler. I didn't even know about my blindness until I was 17. I went through my whole childhood really focused on just the hearing disability. The time that I grew up, it was very common for children to be exposed to the oral language world, only we were not exposed to sign language or the deaf community. That was not really encouraged, and I think it's just a sign of the times. So I remember so many speech therapy exercises, lip exercises, to saying wordless, to getting my annual hearing exam. I just remember that being a part of my childhood, but I felt very okay with my identity, I think also because as a kid, you're not as exposed to being you're not really independent, you're not meeting as many people, you're not in as many different contexts as you are as an adult. And I had a very strong advocate and my mother, so she kind of paved the way for me. But with my blindness, it was a very different story. I was diagnosed when I was 17, and I was headed-off to college right after that. So I had to then be on my own, advocating for myself. And I didn't even fully understand my blindness. It was very new to me. I had night blindness at that time, and I saw better during the day. I wasn't using a white cane. I was still driving. So my life was very different. I was very concerned with hiding my disability, not having other people figure it out. If I did talk about it, it was very emotionally upsetting still. I was still mourning and kind of grieving the life that I thought that I was going to have. When you think about disability, you also have to contend with internalize ableism as a disabled person, you've internalized the same ideas about disability as everyone else in the world, that oh, disability is awful, or people who are disabled are burdened, so then you yourself feel like a burden. So I didn't have a lot of references of what blindness looked like as far as I never have seen an association with blindness and thriving, it was always depicted as something very negative and diminished kind of a life. And that's not been my experience. As the years have gone on, I've been able to accept my disability, meet lots of other blind people who are professionals, who are traveling, are confident in who they are, who are using white canes, and they gave me that model of okay, maybe one day I could use it. It took a long time for me to get comfortable, and then when I started using that cane, my life changed. The conversation started the once I got comfortable with everyone looking at me and I decided to use the pain in the way that works for me with my vision, which people didn't understand. Once I got over that, then it was great. I was advocating for myself in all situations. I was more included, I felt better. And that led me to the place where I wanted to do something more with my voice and I became a public speaker. But it's been a very long journey and I always share that to encourage others because I think people can put a lot of pressure on themselves to be where their role model is or to feel how they feel. You have to go through your own journey and give yourself grace.

Jackie - 00:08:14:

Absolutely. Such great advice. And I love that, Catarina, to be such a great example to people who have disabilities. When you don't have the experience of knowing someone who's thriving with this disability right. It can be very scary. But seeing examples of amazing people doing incredible work and traveling, which we're going to get into in a little while, it can be such an inspiration to so many, not just people with that specific disability or disabilities, but to everyone. So I think that is absolutely fantastic. Let's talk a little about ableism. So you mentioned that term. Explain to us what that is and how we often marginalize people with disabilities.

Catarina - 00:09:04:

Ableism is just as harmful as any other ism in our society. And what it is, is that it believes that nondisabled people are more worthy or valuable than disabled people. It prioritizes their experiences, their lives, and it does not prioritize disabled people in that same way. So that real centering of the non-disabled experience is crucial to ableism. When we think about what the impact of ableism is, it really creates discrimination and prejudice within our society. We have so many processes and environments that are designed with the idea that nondisabled people are the default. And there's such a lack of understanding of the power and the benefits of accessibility, because disabled people are very othered in our society historically have been. So. For example, the ugly laws were on the books for a long time. They forbade disabled people from going outside because they oh, they're too ugly. That's the name of the law to be kept at home is away or to be institutionalized. That's worth the fate for many disabled people for so long in our country, in our society, and unfortunately around the world, some countries are still there where you don't see disabled people out. They are kept at home, they're not accessing education. And that's still a silly big problem, when it comes to Ableism in our country. I hope that we're moving forward. We have had the disability rights movement, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, but of course those are still limited and they're in fact, we still have a lot of work to do today. But I want everyone to know that Ableism is out there. It has to be addressed in our workplaces and our families and our societies. And it's really keeping us apart. It's creating a world that doesn't work for all of us. Because eventually disability is just going to be a part of everyone's life. Even if it's not a part of your life now, it's within your family, or will be within your family or with old age. You will experience a lot of people experience temporary disabilities and then view of the world changes. If you have your own Crutches, you all of a sudden notice where there aren't ramps or where there are buttons to automatically open a door. This is the same world that you were in and taking for granted. So the more accessible we can make everything, the more inclusive we can make everything, this is going to be better for everyone. And that's what I'm always talking about. But we have to start with Ableism, who we value. Another impact of Ableism as well in capitalism is the value of productivity being someone's worth. And so the contributions of disabled people who might not be working are really devalued and minimized. But there are so many ways to be a valuable human.

Jackie - 00:12:25:

Thank you for sharing that, Catarina. It's so important. And I love what you said, because one in four people has some type of disability that is a lot, right? When we're thinking about disability and how often we other people, we think it's, well, it's this small group over here. No, that's not a small group, it's a large group. And you're so right that whether you're experiencing that yourself or in your family, the disability diversity category is something that any of us can become a part of at any time and as we age, right? If we're lucky enough to do that, there are those considerations as well. And so this is something that we have to address universally and make things more accessible in our workplaces, in our communities, in our environments, because of the number of people that have disabilities of some kind. I love that you brought that up and then you talked about accessibility, right, with a person temporarily on Crutches. But when I think about accessible technologies and things, there are certain things that have been created for people with disabilities that all of us use. If we think about Siri and Alexa and doors that open automatically for people who are pushing strollers, or there are so many uses for accessible technology that we all take advantage of, and we should remember that as well.

Catarina - 00:14:08:

Just to comment on the number of disabled people, that statistic one in four. I've shifted how I talk about it now because it is a self-report. Everyone is being counted, has to identify themselves as disabled. And actually saying I'm disabled is something that some people resist and some people know. Example there are many mental health conditions that are classified as disabilities, and we have different situations like that. Maybe someone is injured from has a permanent injury from a job, but they might not know, like, oh yeah, that's classified as a disability. Diabetes is a disability. So I think that's very important to acknowledge as well that the numbers are higher than that data, and it's really such a large group of people.

Jackie - 00:14:56:

Absolutely. Catarina, thank you for making that clarification, because you're right, it requires self identification. And whether you don't know or don't want to share that information, you have to use that as a baseline, knowing that it's higher. So thanks for that. As we think, Catarina, about I want to just go back for a second on the phonetics of not having your hearing and then also having learned Spanish before English. How did that affect your school experience? Can you tell us a little bit about that? And you've got so many amazing degrees and certifications, but tell us what that process was like between the hearing loss and learning Spanish first and then English.

Catarina - 00:15:50:

I think a lot of children of immigrants could relate to that experience of not understanding what people are saying when you go to school, crying. I was so young that I don't really remember it now, but I know that's what the experience was, that it was very hard for my mom to drop me off at preschool because I really couldn't understand what they were saying. But I think as children, we benefit from being sponges, being able to absorb language unless we have a learning disability or something else. For me, I eventually started speaking exclusively English and losing my Spanish. So my mother had to reinvest in my Spanish when I was in third grade. She put me in Spanish school on Saturdays. So I started going to school six days a week and doing homework for Spanish school on Friday nights. I did not like this so much now.

Jackie - 00:16:52:

Yeah.

Catarina - 00:16:53:

The fact that that was available in our community, the fact that my parents had the resources to put me in there, all of these things are privileges. I learned reading, writing and history from this school. And I think that's actually really important, because learning how to speak Spanish is just one component of really knowing Spanish. And my parents are not like teachers, so I was able to really learn how to read and write, and that served me well for actually using it in a professional capacity. So yeah, in terms of my schooling, I was mainstream very early on. I spent one year in special education due to my hearing disability, and then I was in a regular education classroom after that for the rest of my education with some pull out services to do speech therapy. I think that I just benefited from a lot of privilege. My parents both have graduate degrees and they were reading to me in the home. I had access to the library at the time. So I loved school, I really did. I was able to learn and not struggle too much. I think I did a lot of lip reading and overcompensating, but when I look back on it, it seemed possible for me. I didn't have huge struggles, but when I went to college, the hardest struggle for me was waking up on my own because I did not wake up on my own in high school.

Jackie - 00:18:30:

Yeah, I think that's a struggle for a lot of college students that have that parent or grandparent or loved one that's given them that shake awake right time for school and having to do that on your own is a new experience.

Catarina - 00:18:46:

Yes, it was very hard because I take out hearing aids when I sleep and alarms were not working or it was quite an adjustment. And I had two early classes my first semester that I missed. That had never been my experience. I was always good in school, always the straight A's, and that was really a wake up call. After that, I started taking classes that only started after 12:00 p.m. afternoon and I gradually gained confidence in waking up on my own and working back. But yeah, a little bit about my college experience. I think that I was always motivated by doing something meaningful with the privilege that I had. And at the beginning of my career, it was about connecting to the Latino community and giving back to this community. So that's why I pursued education when I moved to New York City after college. All New York City teachers have to have a master's degree, so that's why I have a master's degree in education. I needed it in order to work in that job. And then when I changed fields to public health, I was going to be working in a nonprofit sector. I really just wanted more of a background in the systems at work in our world. I didn't have that. Education teaches you, oh, people don't know and you educate them. But when I started working in the food space, like nutrition, food justice, looking at why there was such a difference in the health and the options in my community and in communities in the Bronx, I really had to learn more about systems and everything else that was at work. So that's what public health gave me. And then when I switched careers again, I got accessibility certification so that I could have another good foundational background on accessibility, core competencies. It's been part of my journey and I appreciate being able to have all this learning.

Jackie - 00:20:52:

Absolutely. That's amazing. Catarina, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about your travel. So you are deaf and have 5% of your vision, but you love to travel. How do you navigate that? And will you share an experience or two with us about things that have gone well and things that have maybe gone not so well?

Catarina - 00:21:16:

I've adapted a whole set of strategies for travel because now I'm traveling full time and I'm not just dealing with my disability, I'm also dealing with anxiety related to travel and especially airplanes. So that's something else that I have worked on a lot. In terms of traveling, things that have been important to me are just being I only fly nonstop, so I will build in time to spend in one place before traveling again. So, for example, traveling, spending a weekend and then taking the next flight to the next place, which I'm able to do because this is the full time lifestyle, not just vacation. So I fully appreciate that. That's not possible for everyone. I use my white cane all the time now because every environment is new to me. When I lived in the same community in New York City for years, I had it memorized, so I didn't use my cane during the day. Everywhere that I'm going now is a new place. I'm not spending that much time there though. I'm using my cane all the time. It's also helpful when there are language differences and I don't know the local language. People will make better, more positive assumptions of me if they see me with the cane than if I didn't have it and I bumped into them or what have you. But having the cane really helps me feel more confident, especially in all these new places. And it helps me with flying as well, because we are able to not have to wait in long lines sometimes,

Jackie – 00:22:58:

Right. 

Catarina – 00:22:59:

And I think when we talk about things like that in the disability community, there are sometimes non-disabled people that think we're getting a lot of perks and it's so important to address. We are all the time dealing with a world that's not designed for us and we're doing extra work to adapt all the time. So these one isolated moments where things are a little easier for us are not perks, they are well deserved.

Jackie - 00:23:28:

Absolutely.

Catarina - 00:23:29:

Those are just some things, other things with travel, for example, when we arrive and I travel with my partner, so it looks different to travel with someone else versus if I was just totally on my own. When we enter a new space like our accommodations. We do a tour of the space together, and we have a checklist that we go through. It's an SOP now, standard operating procedure. Looking for the light switches, looking for the outlets, identifying any obstacles. So we'll move furniture when it creates an unsafe something I could trip over or something that doesn't make sense. A lot of times, coffee tables or floating tables will move those away. And so we go through a whole thing and we identify areas like home, the home areas for all the bags, for all the shoes. And we try to create open passageways, always. That's very important. So I have all these strategies, and it's important to me to have adventure. I want to have these experiences. I adjust my energy. If I'm doing something that is taxing, then I'll relax more the next day. I try not to over plan. So, for example, I'm in Portugal right now. I took the Metro for the first time, and I took it by myself because I wanted to challenge myself to be able to figure it out. And on the whole journey, a few things happened that were not great. I got on a train. I was reading the display. It said the name of the stop I needed to get off at. So I got off. I couldn't find where I needed to transfer. There was no tunnel or transfer sign. I got all the way up to the top where the entrance was and asked the person working there, and they said, oh, this is the wrong station. Sometimes the electronic displays are actually wrong. I've never heard of before. That's not happened to me before. I had to get back on the train and go, one more stop and then transfer. The other thing that happens over and over again. When I am alone, people will appear very concerned for me and ask, do you need help? Do you need help? And they're not really observing how I'm navigating I don't often need help. I might need a moment to take in my surroundings or to look at my map, but I don't think I'm appearing flustered. I'm not asking anyone for help in those moments. So that creates a little bit of frustration for me to over and over again have people ask me for help because not ask me if I need help, because they're also often touching me, touching my arm, grabbing me if I don't see them approaching, which without peripheral vision, I typically don't. That can be very jarring. That's something that I don't appreciate about being out on my own and having all these assumptions made that I can't just be a blind person that knows where I'm going. Navigating and then something great that happened also here in Portugal, is that I co hosted an accessible Portugal travel experience for disabled travelers, which was a week long. I partnered with an accessible travel company here called Portugal 4all Senses. And we hosted eight people with all different kinds of disabilities. Autism, dyslexia, chronic illness, brain injury, deaf-blind, blind.

Jackie - 00:27:08:

Wow.

Catarina - 00:27:09:

We had all of it. It was really fun. A lot of the participants had not traveled on their own before. They had only traveled with their friends and family members. This is a big undertaking, growth moment for them. We formed a really beautiful community between all of us, learning from each other, helping each other, and connecting. So I was just thrilled to be able to offer that experience. We also had someone with a physical disability, a mobility disability, and it was really fun. I shared it on my social media. People were following along on the stories. And I'm continuing to share a little bit more about what do we do and how is it accessible? Because I think many times people don't understand how you can make travel accessible and inclusive for people. But we want to travel disabled people want to see the world and just like anyone else.

Jackie - 00:28:06:

That is so amazing. Catarina, let's talk a little bit about inclusive and accessible travel. What do we in general need to know about that from you as an expert? And then what shifts do we need to start making from a tourism perspective, from an accessibility perspective, to make sure that people with disabilities can travel and see the world?

Catarina - 00:28:33:

This is a huge topic, so I need to say I can only cover a little bit of it.

Jackie - 00:28:38:

Okay, perfect.

Catarina - 00:28:39:

Yes. First of all, if we're talking about air travel, we need the airlines to take care of people's wheelchairs and treat them with respect. Airlines are in the United States, are breaking or damaging at least 29 wheelchairs daily. And this has been happening for a long time, I believe decades. There has not been a change in the industry. So if someone arrives to a destination and their wheelchair is broken, they have lost their independence, they have lost their ability to navigate the world. And many power chairs especially are customized to the person's body. So even if an airline gives them a replacement chair, that chair can actually lead to health problems and complications because it's not custom designed for their body. That can cause issues. So we really need the airlines to address this issue, to make it the big priority that it should be. Because time and time again something happens to someone, it is amplified in the news and people get agitated. We've had losses in the disability community. People have died because of these issues. And I'm waiting to see a true solution and piratization from the airline industry. I believe that the DOT is working on something they're amplifying or working with the community, but I'm waiting to see what is actually going to happen beyond this huge issue with wheelchairs users and their ability to travel. Trust that their chairs will be taken care of. The second thing is that everyone in the travel industry needs training on disability. Everyone people at TSA are really causing microaggressions for how they work with disabled people. People who are flight attendants are not understanding disability, are making assumptions about what people need, and are not really equipped with best practices. So, for example, I was on a plane one time. There was going to be an overnight flight. The lights were going to dim. The flight attendant asked me if I wanted a tour of the bathroom, if I wanted him to show me the bathroom where everything was. No one had ever asked that to me before, but he had seen my cane and obviously I don't know where he got this from. Did they train him? He's the only person in the whole industry that has asked me this. I said yes. I thought it would be great. I also told him, when it gets dark, I might need help going to the bathroom. How can I call you? And he did guide me and I just held his arm and we went down the aisle. And I've used flashlights other times, but I just get very nervous and almost sometimes avoid using the bathroom if I'm on my own and it's just a very big flight. There are so many best practices, but a lot of it comes down to communication and asking people what they need or how you can help them if they need help. All these kinds of communication moments when we think about activities and people who are providing travel activities, they also can train their staff. But there are some best practices that you can also use. Like can you provide captions in some way on tours, on group experiences, a lot of times the audio quality is very poor or the groups are super large and understanding a tour guide is very difficult. So whatever you're doing trying to make it accessible, you can focus on the experience. You can also focus on your marketing and your communications being accessible. A lot of times disabled people are spending extra time researching whether an activity is accessible and they're looking at pictures that other people have taken because the company information is not sufficient. They're not really seeing, are there steps? Is there an accessible bathroom that someone else says it's accessible? That's a real problem too, with hotels. A lot of times I see disabled people saying, hey, they said this was an accessible bathroom, but there's an issue here. This is not designed well. This does not work for me. So just because something says accessible doesn't mean it actually works when you have people with lived experience using it. So every industry needs to work with the disability community to improve their experience. And I think that we just need to make it. Whatever you can do to create access, everyone will appreciate. Whether that's beach wheelchairs that are free, that's something, or making the beach accessible, that's a big deal. Everyone can be included. There's a lot to people can do, but I just really want people to care about the issue and start working on it if they haven't already, because we have been waiting for a long time.

Jackie - 00:33:47:

Absolutely. Catarina, you mentioned an experience where you are navigating a Metro, right? And you've had people come up to you and say, oh, do you need help? And touch you? Right. We know that's not proper etiquette, right? And so how do well meaning people often get it wrong when it comes to disability etiquette? And what can we do as a society, right, to better support people with disabilities in our workplaces and our communities.

Catarina - 00:34:22:

In terms of getting it wrong? I just think that a lot of people are uncomfortable with disability and each person who wants to do better can spend the time learning about ableism, can spend the time learning about disability in general. From our own voices on social media, you can follow Disabled Content Creators. You can watch the documentary Crip Camp on Netflix, which is also available for free on YouTube. It's an incredible resource and starting point. If you want to watch a short video, watch Stella Young's TED Talk I am not your inspiration. Thank you very much. You need to remake your idea of what disability is. Disability is not something to be inspired by. We do not exist to make you feel better about your life or more grateful for what you have. You need to understand we're equally as human as you and we are whole humans. We have other aspects to our identity other than our disability. So that's really important to acknowledge. On the flip side, a lot of times we see people thinking of disability as tragedy. And this is where you have microaggressions as well, where people are being prayed over without consent, someone saying, oh, I pray for your healing, I pray for that you will be cured. And I've had very unpleasant interactions with people where I didn't ask for any of this and that is not okay. So do not offer prayers for people and do not assume that someone is living a bad life. A lot of times people also ask intrusive questions. They want to know why someone's disabled, what happened to them? Think about whether you would want a stranger asking you about your life and challenges or difficulties. It's really the entitlement, the sense of entitlement that people have to someone else's story and experience that's not respectful. So a lot of the microaggressions come from ableism and viewing disability in this negative way. So I highly encourage people to learn about disability, to become comfortable with talking about it, and to also when it comes to taking action and trying to help disabled people, observe first, see if you think they actually need help. Ask if someone needs help and then ask even how can I best help you? I'm always training people how to guide a blind person because people don't know. They're grabbing my arm and I say, no, I need to grab your arm because guiding me. So I do what I can. But everyone can get on their own learning journey and we really need to see some change. And then your second part of your question, you were asking about how can we support people who are disabled in our workplaces and our communities? So you can look at the access within whatever community you're a part of in the workplace. A lot of times there are so many things going on that are inaccessible. And so training your meeting facilitators and your team managers on disability and how to be inclusive is really important, I believe, not just in staying in the awareness space, but giving people actionable. Best practices like the things that I share in my TEDx Talk are meeting agendas, meeting notes, and always having captions on meetings. That's a great starting point if you're not there yet, sending out meeting agendas in advance. Always, always having meeting notes sent out after. And these benefit different kinds of people meeting, for example, people with learning disabilities, people with memory issues. Also someone who was tired that day and doesn't remember what happened.

Jackie - 00:38:36:

That's right.

Catarina - 00:38:36:

Actually, everyone but that's important to just remember as a starting point. Beyond that, I think that for the workplace or any community, we need to look at our spaces and how inclusive they are or having a lack of inclusion. And whether you ask disabled people directly or you learn from the best practices that exist, there are a lot of opportunities within your area of expertise to work on it. If you do digital accessibility, do you have alt text on all your images? Do you have image description? Are you capitalizing each word in your hashtags? Are you including transcripts? If you are creating long form video or any kind of video, even on my Instagram reels, I put transcripts now. Caption. I just want everyone to have access to some people can't read as quick as captions are displaying. 

Jackie – 00:39:34:

Right. 

Catarina – 00:39:35:

So whatever communities, if you prioritize disability inclusion, that is a great starting point. Make sure it's a priority, invest in it, and don't rely on disabled people to do all the work to become inclusive.

Jackie - 00:39:53:

Love that. Thank you for sharing that. That's such good advice for all of us. Catarina, what's the message that you want to leave our listeners with today?

Catarina - 00:40:03:

I hope that everyone today understands that disabled people are worthy and valuable just as we are when we focus unfortunately, we focus too much on the medical model of disability, which says, oh, disabled people need to be fixed, they need to be treated, they need to be cured. And the place for them is with the doctors. Like the doctors have all the knowledge. The social model of disability is what I am squarely under that says that disabled people are okay, are valuable and whole, just as we are. There's nothing wrong with us. We don't need to be fixed. We need to fix our inaccessible world. And that's what we need all the energy to go towards, where there's a power as well in disabled people coming together and being part of a shared identity. So I love being part of a disability community. I have disability pride, and that is really important. So I hope everyone listening has had someone sort of shift in their understanding of disability.

Jackie - 00:41:13:

Catarina, thank you so much for that. How can people learn more about your work and get in touch with you?

Catarina - 00:41:19:

To learn more about my work, a great starting point is my TEDx Talk, Creating Inclusive Workplaces for All. I also have a website, catarinarivera.com or catarinariverapun.com, where I share all of my resources. I have my press features on there. You can just learn more about me and my services as well. I offer public speaking consulting, and I do content creation partnerships. So in terms of the speaking, I have keynotes, fireside chats, presentations, workshops, and I'm working out with several companies on long-term projects, which is very meaningful and exciting, such as One global company that we've created, an accessible Champions program. So everyone in the program is spending six months learning about accessibility, and then they will continue to drive initiatives within the larger organization. So very excited about work like that. And if you just want to follow me and get connected and see what I'm talking about, I'm always sharing actionable, best practices, stories and fun content on Instagram, @blindishlatina or on LinkedIn, where you can just search my name.

Jackie- 00:42:37:

Awesome. Catarina, thank you so much. This has been such a great episode, so many incredible tips to create a more accessible world for all of us. Thank you.

Catarina - 00:42:48:

Thank you so much for having me.

Jackie - 00:42:59:

Thanks for joining me for this episode. Please take a moment to subscribe and review this podcast and share this episode with a friend. Become a part of our community on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. This show was edited and produced by Earfluence. I'm Jackie Ferguson. Join us for our next episode of Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox. Take care of your self and each other.